“Catch-22” By Joseph - Khamkoo

“Catch-22” By Joseph Heller 103
smoking with a cigarette holder. As far as he could tell, his was the only cigarette holder
in the whole Mediterranean theater of operations, and the thought was both flattering
and disquieting. He had no doubts at all that someone as debonair and intellectual as
General Peckem approved of his smoking with a cigarette holder, even though the two
were in each other’s presence rather seldom, which in a way was very lucky, Colonel
Cathcart recognized with relief, since General Peckem might not have approved of his
cigarette holder at all. When such misgivings assailed Colonel Cathcart, he choked back
a sob and wanted to throw the damned thing away, but he was restrained by his
unswerving conviction that the cigarette holder never failed to embellish his masculine,
martial physique with a high gloss of sophisticated heroism that illuminated him to
dazzling advantage among all the other full colonels in the American Army with whom
he was in competition. Although how could he be sure?
Colonel Cathcart was indefatigable that way, an industrious, intense, dedicated
military tactician who calculated day and night in the service of himself. He was his own
sarcophagus, a bold and infallible diplomat who was always berating himself disgustedly
for all the chances he had missed and kicking himself regretfully for all the errors he had
made. He was tense, irritable, bitter and smug. He was a valorous opportunist who
pounced hoggishly upon every opportunity Colonel Korn discovered for him and
trembled in damp despair immediately afterward at the possible consequences he might
suffer. He collected rumors greedily and treasured gossip. He believed all the news he
heard and had faith in none. He was on the alert constantly for every signal, shrewdly
sensitive to relationships and situations that did not exist. He was someone in the know
who was always striving pathetically to find out what was going on. He was a blustering,
intrepid bully who brooded inconsolably over the terrible ineradicable impressions he
knew he kept making on people of prominence who were scarcely aware that he was
even alive.
Everybody was persecuting him. Colonel Cathcart lived by his wits in an unstable,
arithmetical world of black eyes and feathers in his cap, of overwhelming imaginary
triumphs and catastrophic imaginary defeats. He oscillated hourly between anguish and
exhilaration, multiplying fantastically the grandeur of his victories and exaggerating
tragically the seriousness of his defeats. Nobody ever caught him napping. If word
reached him that General Dreedle or General Peckem had been seen smiling, frowning,
or doing neither, he could not make himself rest until he had found an acceptable
interpretation and grumbled mulishly until Colonel Korn persuaded him to relax and take
things easy.
Lieutenant Colonel Korn was a loyal, indispensable ally who got on Colonel Cathcart’s
nerves. Colonel Cathcart pledged eternal gratitude to Colonel Korn for the ingenious
moves he devised and was furious with him afterward when he realized they might not
work. Colonel Cathcart was greatly indebted to Colonel Korn and did not like him at all.
The two were very close. Colonel Cathcart was jealous of Colonel Korn’s intelligence
and had to remind himself often that Colonel Korn was still only a lieutenant colonel,
even though he was almost ten years older than Colonel Cathcart, and that Colonel
Korn had obtained his education at a state university. Colonel Cathcart bewailed the
miserable fate that had given him for an invaluable assistant someone as common as
Colonel Korn. It was degrading to have to depend so thoroughly on a person who had
been educated at a state university. If someone did have to become indispensable to
him, Colonel Cathcart lamented, it could just as easily have been someone wealthy and
well groomed, someone from a better family who was more mature than Colonel Korn
and who did not treat Colonel Cathcart’s desire to become a general as frivolously as
Colonel Cathcart secretly suspected Colonel Korn secretly did.
Colonel Cathcart wanted to be a general so desperately he was willing to try anything,
even religion, and he summoned the chaplain to his office late one morning the week
after he had raised the number of missions to sixty and pointed abruptly down toward
his desk to his copy of The Saturday Evening Post. The colonel wore his khaki shirt
collar wide open, exposing a shadow of tough black bristles of beard on his egg-white